Over the course of some odd years now, and in my own dealings I never really understood management. I mean, you always have a boss. Whether it be the board of trustees, share holders, your lawyer, the IRS, your husband/wife, Mom, squad leader, customers or some such. Inevitably you're always answering to someone for the decisions that you make on a daily basis and in that way I've always understood it. However to the extent that one has a boss that tells them to do xyz I never understood until now. It just simply never made sense to me.

I was always under the guise that one applied for a job and with that job came duties. So long as those duties were done, one was free to go about their business in whatever manner they felt necessary. This is how I've always operated, in almost all regard, feel free to ask any of my umpteen bosses. There may come a time where things change and so does the job and/or one moves to fit their needs of career growth or whatever one needs at the time. This always made perfect sense to me and in practice, this works. Trust me, I have learned, it simply works well when you hire the right people for the job. Unfortunately, I have seen many a person as of late take the context of management and put such a nasty and unhealthy spin on it that it's as if I am almost watching some episode of reality tv. Expecting someone to pop-out at the end and say, "GOT YA!"

On recollection of my peers, friends, colleagues and how they used to ramble on about how horrible their job was I simply could not believe it. This has nothing to do with politics, passive aggressiveness, water cooler talk, all of that even in my own situations it was never really that bad. In the most sincerest form I always thought there were bits of embellishment in order to paint an entertaining picture. Now, that I'm in a different position and have almost a complete 360-degree view of the situation I can say there is a definite tone-deafness i've noticed through-out my career. Sadly this odd behavior is within my own ranks and sans any response from legal by the end of this I feel the need to speak on it, obviously no particulars.

I'm not sure what MBA's are learning in school right now, as I don't have an MBA myself and don't actually have any need for one, don't plan on getting one and think it's a worthless degree. Before the hate, please, I have several MBA degree family members. However, when it comes to managing people, persons who are hired to do a job there is an art that I feel has been lost. Part of this is just common courtesy. The whole, treat people as you'd like to be treated bit and the other part of this at its most basic form happens to be manners. An employee of a company needs to feel empowered to do their job in a way that is conducive to the overall productivity of the company which is respectful towards not just the job, but the company as a whole. This is called, good business. It promotes a positive energy and allows open door policies to work, it also quells incessant water cooler talk and allows for honest and open fighting about work. A good fight over work promotes ideas and healthy competition it also helps to cycle out poison. I particularly love a good heated argument every now and then over a problem, it shows passion and without passion, you have nothing. Probably get into some sort of heated discussion at least once a week, good for the blood pressure.

Anything opposite of this and that is called, bad business. When business is bad, it's bad for everyone and when it's bad for everyone it's bad for the bottom line and culture. As such, we wouldn't go into business to see bad bottom lines so reorganization is necessary and it involves placing the blame on poor management. Management is not about shoveling work to someone, or sitting on their shoulder to make sure they do it, or telling them how to do what it is you hired them to do. For myself, proper management has always involved letting the person you hired for the job... Do the job. Seeing strengths and making synergies that allow for delivery of product. Whatever they need to do the job, is what the role "management" calls for. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes it is not, especially if you feel the job isn't being done adequately or to your liking. Sometimes you have people problems (trust me, I have had these in such a way you would not believe). Sometimes the person just isn't the right cultural fit. Sometimes you have strong urges to meddle, or try to pitch in where you don't understand the underlying problem, but think you do. It is best to refrain at these points and leave it to the person you hired, to do it. If it's not getting done, that's a different yarn-ball. One can't fix everything and it is at that point, you respectfully let the person go with no hard feelings if it can be avoided.

If you're at the top of the food chain, sometimes it requires taking the pulse of your core and making sure it's protected from any bad business. The day-in, day-out core of your organization, company, squad, team or etc needs protecting and you should remove or polarize correctly those who practice any form of bad business. This is an old learned lesson presenting itself anew to me within these last couple of weeks and I plan to go ahead and do just that. Lets get back to the core tenets of good business, courtesy and respect for our peers, colleagues, employees and even at the end of the day our enemies.

Nooooo response but then again it's 11:53pm est... politely, fuck legal, this is my personal blog, had it way before anything else and I'm sure i've used much more explicit profanity laced delivery around these parts.. Posting.